Night Sweats

I am sick and tired of night sweats. Sick. Sick. Sick. There, I’ve said it out loud.

And no, I am not talking about menopausal night sweats.
I conquered those decades ago like the warrior woman I am.

I am talking about the clothes-drenching, sheet-drowning, middle-of-the-night baptismal pool night sweats caused by lymphoma and chemotherapy.
The double whammy.
The overachiever of bodily betrayal.

Three, four, sometimes five times a night.
Every night.
For weeks.
Every. Single. Night.

Bedtime is no longer bedtime. It is logistics.

Before bed, I line up five sets of pajamas like I’m staging a quick-change Broadway show. Each stack is carefully oriented so when I grab it half-asleep, the front is actually the front. This is not my first rodeo.

Next: towels. Five or six of them.
Last time I used sheets and realized this time… I don’t care that much anymore.

You fall asleep hopeful (rookie mistake), having turned the air down because surely this will be the night it doesn’t happen.
Spoiler alert: it happens.

You wake up drenched. Absolutely soaked.
And somehow also freezing, because the air is blasting and your body has turned itself into a swamp.

So you sneak out of bed, shaking and shivering, and stumble over to the stash.
You peel off the wet clothes.
Put on the dry ones.
Repeat this process while trying very hard not to wake up too much or fully question your life choices.

First towel: hair.
Fortunately—thanks to chemo—I don’t have much hair, so that’s efficient at least. That towel goes back with the stack.

Second towel: to the bed.
It gets laid over the bottom sheet.
You flip the pillow.
Then you wad up the wet top sheet and shove it to the foot of the bed under the covers.

I’m short. I don’t need that part anyway.

Two hours later… you do it all again.
And then again.
And then again.

Eventually it’s after 4 a.m., and anything after that is officially get-up time, whether you like it or not.

The interesting thing—at least for me—is that this doesn’t start at the beginning, when the cancer is at its strongest.
It starts later.
With the cumulative effect of the chemo.
Like a delayed punchline no one asked for.

I am very grateful the chemo is over.

And I will be extra glad—borderline celebratory—when the night sweats finally decide to pack up their towels and leave.

Until then, I’ll be over here, running a one-woman overnight laundry service, wondering how it’s possible to be both soaked and freezing at the same time.

Again.